Agent Hawkins had never been a particularly good mingler. Post-change, he was better at blending in and not standing out, but still not an especially social creature. So it was that, for all that had been accomplished in preventing the end of time today, and for all the reason there was to celebrate, he was honestly pretty ready to be done with the silliness and get back to work - though he had to admit, there was a certain manic charm to it, and in any case they certainly owed this much to the maniac in question. Besides, smaller parties he didn't mind so much, and this was certainly a small (and extremely eclectic) group of guests.
Cecilia, on the other hand, was more openly amused by the festivities, but he could tell that she had something on her mind as well. "What're you thinking?" he asked. She frowned. Hawkins often found himself surprised by how her face could be so clearly mechanical and yet convey such recognizably human emotion.
"I was thinking," she said, "that...it's really kind of sad. I mean, this Enemy, if we're understanding it correctly...when you get right down to it, I think it's just desperate not to grow up. Not to commit itself to becoming something."
The masked man snorted quietly. "I suppose that's one way of looking at it," he said. "But this thing's not exactly content to stay in Neverland, and it's willing to deceive, exploit, and obliterate apparently any number of people in order to get its way in any old place it feels like going. It's an awfully spoiled child, if we want to look at it that way."
"Oh, no kidding," the gynoid replied. "All the same, it is kind of sad...kind of pathetic. For it to have gone to such lengths to avoid merely becoming even as definite as every other thing in the universe...it's like the most crippling case of indecision in all of spacetime. I dunno, I guess I'd just like to tell it to grow the hell up already. I mean, we're defined, and we get along fine."
Hawkins nodded. "If only it were that simple. Unfortunately, I don't think you or I would be very convincing parental figures to a nebulous mass of potential energy."
Cecilia shrugged. "Yeah. Anyway, I still don't get what it's even trying to accomplish. With this many incursions into our corner of reality, it has to have picked up that our world is very much not the kind of place that suits it. That's even why they cut off Melanie, isn't it? So why are they still coming here?"
"Good question." Hawkins sipped at his drink. "I suppose the obvious reason would be if they needed room, but if that were the case, there's got to be closer places that would be more convenient for them. That is, if I understand what we've been told correctly, they're very far out. So I don't think they can be coming here just for space."
"Which means there must be something here they want," Cecilia said. "But whatever it is, I wouldn't think it could be part of our fairly organized and definite little world, or they wouldn't want it, by definition. Because of definition, rather. What is it that we have that could affect them?"
Hawkins raised an eyebrow. "Hmm. Here's an idea. Let's take gravity for an example - gravitational force decreases by a proportional amount with distance, not a constant amount, so for any object with mass, its gravity can approach zero, but can never actually reach zero."
Cecilia nodded. "It just reaches a point where it's so small that it essentially doesn't matter, yeah."
"Right. But it's never actually zero. Even at the other end of the universe, objects are still affected in some infinitesimal way by, say, the gravity of our own Sun. Just let's hypothesize for a moment that reality itself is similarly a sort of fundamental force, a sort of anti-entropy, and that maybe it works in some similarly proportional way."
The robot-woman couldn't quite suppress a laugh at that. "Reality equals definition divided by the square of distance, then?" she asked wryly.
Hawkins shrugged, grinning sheepishly. "Or something like that. It'll do for the point: suppose that our very existence is a threat to their nebulousness? Even if an infinitesimally small one, maybe the known universe does exert some kind of defining force on them that they don't like. If it's stronger with intelligent life, maybe that's the reason they're coming here and not just systematically wiping out organized matter one galaxy at a time."
Cecilia nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose; take out the biggest threats first. But with this many failed attempts, why would they keep doing it? I mean, they're trying new tactics, but they seem to run into the same essential problem. Why not just do some of that general entropic obliteration on the unoccupied, undefended galaxies, then, at least for a start?"
"That is a good question," Hawkins mused. "I wonder. If the enemy is outnumbered and in some ways outgunned, and consistently defeated even if a couple times it's a close call, and they keep pressing through anyway, largely to a single area, no less, then either they're crazy, or..."
"...they're looking for something," Cecilia said. "Some kind of tactical advantage. They think there's something here that will give them the edge they need to remove this threat to their undefined existence, and they're willing to take real risks like working with creatures they know to be a threat to themselves in order to get it. But what?"
"I would have said the Numbers," Hawkins said. "But you're right, they're sort of outmatched there - thank God. And the best they could hope for in that case is to defeat them, anyway, and if they were only after that, it would make more sense to use a concentrated, brute-force approach than this periodic-excursion stuff. Not that they haven't taken their shots at getting rid of the Numbers, but I wonder if they aren't scouting for something else while they're at it. But like you said, the question is what."
"I don't know," Cecilia said, with a peculiarly synthetic sigh. "Aside from the Numbers, what around here could possibly have a serious impact on the state of reality itself?"
Hawkins's face flashed with realization for a moment, then fell. "What?" his partner prompted.
He frowned. "I thought for a moment," he said, "what about Adam?"
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. "You mean his...uh, her air-bubble thingy? But I thought that just sort of moves between universes, not actually alters them."
Hawkins nodded. "That's the problem. Still, it's quite the artifact. Suppose there were something else like it, only instead of being a door to whatever world you wished for, it actually affected the world you were in?"
Cecilia frowned. "You really think something like that might be in the area?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. It'd certainly be powerful enough to justify taking some risks to get to. Something like that, you could probably unmake reality just as easily as you could make it."
The gynoid shrugged. "I don't know, Nate. I'd think if anybody had something like that, we'd know about it. I mean, Adam's isn't even that powerful, and she caused a major news incident. Nothing even approaching that scale has happened in this area since the Sun changed..."
